Atmospheric Anomaly

I think there must have been something in the
air that day - the day I dragged myself from Tom's spare room
bed after another expensive and depressingly boring night out
in London. I had to get home, out of the city - to somewhere
anonymous and calm, somewhere without pressure, the pressure
of money and the pressure of having a good time, somewhere where
it didn't matter that I consistently failed to live up to it.
So it was with thick and painful blood sloshing around my skull
that I faced the fresh and cold morning, vainly hoping that
the walk to the tube station would cause the alcohol sweating
from my pores to evaporate.

God, I was depressed. Not in a wrist slashing, clinical sort
of way of course - just down and pissed off. Fifty pounds I
had got through last night - A pub, full of people laughing,
drinking, smoking, apart from me, sat at a table wondering why
I felt sick and just wanted to go home. But I hadn't seen Tom
and the others for a while, so I went on with them to a dark
and loud club, drinking lethally expensive drinks with, unfortunately,
a less than lethal effect. Why didn't I have enough money, stamina
and joie de vivre to have a good time? Maybe it came
from using phrases like joie de vivre... But why did
everyone else seem able to have a laugh? I've seen twentysomething
T.V. shows. Beautiful men and women, wearing expensive clothes,
having a great time. But I couldn't seem to do it, couldn't
live up to the expectation. What the hell was I going to tell
the grandchildren?

Trying not to retch at the smell of stale nicotine that seemed
to ooze from the walls of the tube station, I bought a ticket
to Paddington and headed to my platform. It was then I started
to sense the strange atmosphere. I've thought since that maybe
this is what people were like early on a Saturday morning -
a union formed by an unwilling early exit from bed and the need
for a new head, resulting in the dropping of barriers, a pleasure
in the existence of other people. But I've tried to find that
feeling again, and I haven't - not even on a Saturday morning.
No, things were just unnaturally odd - somehow I could just
sense that it was ok to say good morning to people, relax in
the company of strangers, to smile at anyone who caught my eye,
with a knowing complicity in the unusual atmosphere.

All the same, it was with some surprise that I watched a pretty
girl walk up to me and smile. I hesitantly smiled back, hoping
my eyes twinkled in the same way.
'You're very well dressed,' she said. 'That means one of two
things. Either you're gay, or your girlfriend dressed you. So
which one are you?'
I was silent for a second, intimidated by the familiar feeling
of being the less dominant partner in a conversation even before
I had spoken.
'The former' I said. Somehow it was less embarrassing than the
truth - the latter. Again she smiled at me, half said, 'oh well'
and was gone. As I felt the rush of air, pushed out of the tunnel
by an incoming train, on the side of my face, I smiled to myself.
Whatever it was floating around, mixing with the murky fumes
of the city, and the contagious germs of the underground, it
made me feel happier.

But as I sat on the train, staring blankly at the travel insurance
advert above the seat opposite, I wondered at the truth. She
was taking the piss, surely - she was probably returning home
after a night out. Drunk, drugged whatever - having the sort
of time I should be having. She had seen the wanker standing
alone on the platform, and decided to have a bit of a laugh.
And then go back to her mates. In fact maybe there was nothing
in the air - everyone was just mucking around, drunk, high,
having the time of their lives and ripping the piss out of the
outsider. And as I emerged into the gleaming, futuristic refurbished
Paddington station, it seemed to me more like a hospital, sterile,
clinical and dead...

What was I thinking? I wandered towards the train timetable,
chastising myself for being such a self-absorbed, angst-ridden
child.
As I was scanning the board for a train that would take me home
I noticed someone slowly approach me out of the corner of my
eye. I turned to look, and he suddenly smiled at me.
'I wasn't sure whether it was you or not. How are you doing?'
He grabbed my hand, and firmly shook it.
'Hi! Yeah, I'm really well. How about you?' I enthusiastically
answered trying to work out who the hell he was. The face did
look familiar - short, cropped dark hair, grey eyes, slightly
unshaven (but weren't the Saturday club all?) and a flat face,
as though an abusive parent had brought a large frying pan at
speed into the centre of his nose at a crucial stage in development.
'Not bad, not bad at all,' he said vaguely and then, 'when's
your train? Let's go and grab a coffee and catch up.'

It was Bob, I was sure now. A friend of a friend who I had met
briefly a couple of times, and both times we were drunk. I remember
that he had been a little over familiar those times as well.
We found a table at a café and ordered a couple of drinks. Bob
lit a cigarette, and happily talked about what he was up to
at the moment - just graduated, looking for a job, didn't really
have hope in hell of getting one etc.- while I tried politely
to avoid the various clouds of bluish smoke wafting around my
head, a result of dramatic hand gestures.

Suddenly he stopped in mid-flow. 'God, did you hear about Pete?
Do you know him?'
'No, I don't think so'. Fairly unlikely since I barely knew
Bob.
'Oh well... but I'll tell you anyway', he said eagerly, then
after a quick check of his watch, 'but I must be brief. My train
leaves soon.
'In my opinion' he started, 'Pete is a real twat. Always has
been - utterly self-obsessed. Image, trend - he has to master
it all. What you see with him is a carefully arranged appearance
to the world. He has an idea of what it is he must be - a certain
cultural ideal - and creates it. In clothes, idiom, music, films,
hairstyle - the lot. I don't really know the right way to describe
it...'
Bob paused for a second, thinking. 'I know, he watches all those
T.V programmes, the ones which outline his chosen lifestyle'.
'What like Ground Force, Changing Rooms?' I ventured.
Bob suppressed a smile. 'No - Friends, This Life,
Ally McBeal - American, '90s, coffee drinking, sensitive,
hair dressing... sorry, I'm getting a bit carried away. It's
just that it's so transparent. Why can't he just be him, for
God's sake? Actually, I think he thinks he lives in a TV show.
A kind of Pete's Creek perhaps. Except maybe with a studio audience.
I'm sure whenever he enters a room he hears cheers and applause
in his head.'
I laughed. 'Why does he do it?' I asked.
'Not a clue. Maybe he's not happy with himself. Maybe he just
wants to try and get women. Of course he's deluded in both instances.
It makes him a right pain. So dismissive of anything that doesn't
fit into his idea of things. It was this that contributed to
his downfall.' Bob smiled with glee at his melodramatic language.

'He was in a music shop. One of those slightly esoteric ones
- lots of vinyl, small, full of musos. He was leafing through
whichever records were 'cool' at the time, enjoying the mental
delusion of being seen and admired. Just then this bloke came
in. He walked up to the front desk and asked if the shop stocked
the latest Five album. Pete, arsehole that he is, could not
resist this and let out a loud snort of derision, followed by
a disdainful look. The bloke noticed, and as he left the shop,
gave Pete a slight shove into the racks. Pete stumbled forward,
and hurt that his image of trendyness had been a little dented,
called out 'wanker' after the guy. The bloke left the shop,
and then, all of two seconds later, re-entered with his two
brothers.

'They dragged Pete out of the shop, threw him onto the pavement
and proceeded to give him a mild kicking, and then started to
rip off his clothes - the gilet, the Polo shirt, the chinos;
they all came off, and Pete was left there on the street just
in his boxer shorts. Obviously it was at that time that wonderful
fate decided that a group of his friends should be walking down
the street. Normally they would have helped him, picked him
up and dusted him off. But the crucial boxer shorts delayed
that for a while. Pete, king of trend, image, young twentysomething
cool, was wearing not Calvin Klein, not Pierre Cardin, but Fred
Flintstone underwear. I think Barney Rubble was on them too.
They were scuba diving, I believe, with rocks as aqua-lungs.
He was a laughing stock. His friends did help him, but not after
pissing themselves with laughter for at least five minutes.

'After that Pete retreated into himself and hasn't been seen
out much since. I hope he's learning how to be genuine. You
know Paul, these fake people always get destroyed in the end.'
'Simon' I corrected him.
'Sorry mate?'
'My name's Simon' I said.
There was a pause. Bob's cheeks slowly reddened and he looked
down at his coffee.
'Oh... I'm sorry', he stammered, 'I thought you were someone
else'. He hurriedly stood and picked up his bag.
'Um... sorry,' he repeated, and was gone.

I sat stunned for a few minutes. Frowning, a thought suddenly
occurred to me. Hadn't I heard somewhere that that guy Bob was
off in South America for a year? Slowly I picked up my bag.
My train was being announced. It was that atmospheric anomaly
again, must have been. Despite the embarrassment of the situation
I realised that I felt great, fantastic. My head still hurt,
but that seemed to be the only thing left from last night -
even this morning. Suddenly there there was no pressure - I
didn't care. I'd tell the grandchildren whatever I wanted. Thank
God for Pete.

Robert Allen

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